Last week I was taking part in the ISEF (International Science and Engineering Fair) in Phoenix, Arizona! I stayed in the city for a week and got to see some of the attractions of the hinterland. Probably the most striking and nice thing about the trip was the heat! Here is a picture of the view of Downtown Phoenix from my hotel window on the 14th floor: (more pictures are yet to come!)
Cityscape at Sunrise
It is raining heavily again outside…
Water Droplets
When I was in London a few weeks ago, I was part of a group of ten people. That included my family as well as a number of friends who were also visiting the capital. Being part of such a large group was rather awkward; especially when it came to dinner! We had to pre-book all the restaurants in advance.
For the second night we decided to go to a Japanese Restaurant. My sister lives in London, so she knew that the restaurant chain made good food. But she had never gone to the exact restaurant which we had booked…
The first thing that I noticed when we arrived at the restaurant was that it was tiny! There was no way that a group of ten people would fit comfortably into such a small space. But we had booked, and they had said that they had enough room. The real surprise was that they brought us down to a private room in the basement! Japanese people seem to like ‘karaoke’ (I am pretty sure that it is even a word from Japanese origin). This room was definitely their karaoke room.
It was still quite a squeeze, but we enjoyed the happy surprise. There was even a button we could press to call for service! We all ordered some type of Bento Box, as well as a number of starters to share. It was quite nice!
Bento Boxes
I have been way too busy over the last few days; I am currently working on an Engineering project for a competition which will take place in five or so weeks (ISEF). I just finished off the project report, but I still need to finish building the prototype, as well as designing the poster!
Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of my own to post today, but instead I attached a picture which keeps on amusing me; it really is an image of wildlife photography taken to the extreme! It’s a shame that he isn’t using a macro lens…
Although I searched for the actual photographer to credit him/her for this picture, I didn’t find anyone.
Hello?
Ever since I completed the course on Japanese Culture and Language last summer, I have wanted to try some calligraphy. At Christmas, my mum gave me a present of a miniature calligraphy set! Yesterday I finally found the time to try out this set and see how difficult the art actually is…
All of the parts of the calligraphy miniature set!
The calligraphy utensils consist of: the brushes (fude), the ink (sumi), the ink stone (suzuri) and the paper (washi). A small water dish and ladle also came with the set, as well as a book with information and instructions.
To start off, you have to prepare the ink. First of all you put a small amount of water onto the ink stone. Then you slowly grind the ink stick on the stone until ink of a consistent texture is made. Traditionally the ink is always prepared in this fashion, as it means that it is fresh and it retains a good colour.
I began by trying to draw some simple kanji (the Chinese-style characters). It is not easy at all! It takes a lot of patience and concentration to get the strokes exactly right. Both the speed and the pressure applied to the brush give a huge impact to how the finished strokes turn out. Here are some of the best Kanji Characters which I managed to draw:
The symbol for love (Ai)
The symbol for fortune (fuku)
The weather in Ireland is rather intriguing; it can rain one moment and then suddenly the sun can come out the next. Today, in the middle of spring, it happened to be snowing lightly all day. But the funny thing is that it was sunny at the same time! Even though the clouds were sparse and there was a lot of blue sky visible, little the snow kept floating down. Of course all the snow melted as soon as it landed.
Some snow flakes